Supergirl - Season Four

[YellowSubmarine]

Still, you're right that the men he shot intended to break in and assault or murder the occupants of that house, as part of a systematic terrorist attack, essentially a pogrom.

Seems I'm conflating the children of liberty too, because I forgot who Manchester killed. That leaves the bar guy (Petrocelli?) the only one of his victims who wasn't on a certain path to get blood on his hands. Or was he? Still, summarily executing someone before they had committed their act of violence leaves uncertainty as to how exactly things were going to go—certain enough to stop them, but not for much else, especially not for cold bloody murder.

I doubt any viewer is viewing Manchester as a positive character, from the show's cues, to killing people at least one of whom without even an indication he would commit violence, to abducting Kara and being accessory to her attempted assassination, and then to mind raping Jon. Pretty clear.

Yes, they are not Boy Scouts, but no one can make a straight-face argument that places the motives for Oliver and/or Gambi's actions on the same level as Manchester Black.

Both him and Gambi murdered someone after they were no longer an immediate threat to someone's life, but after both of said victims had been a threat to someone's life. Whether it was their own or not, the motives are in the same ballpark, even if Manchester crossed way more lines, allowed the murders to act as his pain release and seemed to have little concern if he got the right people – so he's like Oliver all right.

 

[Reverend]

I think "deeply misguided" is soft-peddling it a bit. As I recall, the five guys Manchester shot in the back were brutal home invaders who were beating an alien man to a pulp in front of his toddler daughter before Manchester intervened.

I don't disagree, I was just making a comparison on the basis that the people that Oliver and Gambi generally went after were themselves either trained killers, or protected by them. For the most part these idiots are enthusiastic amateurs. The kind that can easily be dealt with non-lethally, by someone that knows what they're doing.

Not saying he was right to appoint himself judge, jury, and executioner, but let's not those generously characterize his victims as "ordinary guys" who were just "misguided." Ordinary guys don't break doors down and beat innocent people in front of their children, and who knows how far they would have gone had they not been interrupted. That's way beyond "misguided."

Indeed, ordinary people don't that...until they do, which is kind of the point of this arc.
These people aren't trained killers, hardened criminals or psychopaths, they're mostly otherwise ordinary people. Just like the mobs that hacked their neighbours to death in Rwanda, or that participated in Kristallnacht, or the riots surrounding the partition of India & Pakistan, or who put sheets on their heads to go burn crosses in people's lawns and murdered their fellow citizen because of the colour of their skin.

It's all too easy to dismiss such people as raving loonies, but the uncomfortable truth is that under certain conditions, it's terrifyingly easy to nudge people into becoming monsters. Indeed, what's going on with Manchester is on some level a part of that same cycle of hate, violence and retribution.

So yeah, I'm not soft-peddling what they're doing or attempting to do at all. Indeed, that they're pissed off, deeply misguided amateurs makes them a whole other kind of dangerous.

 

[thribs]

I find it funny they got a black guy to play Manchester Black. Makes the name sound racist now.
I suppose we have a Black Panther and Black Lightning.

 

[The Realist]

Which is not based on anything I'm pointing out about the characters. You are continuing to paint a false equivalency between Manchester Black and Gambi; as others have pointed out, Black is simply a revenge-motivated murderer. There is no equivalency for that, nor can his actions be compared to the thing you continue to step over--Gambi taking responsibility for his role in a government program that destroyed lives going back several generations. That--again--is a form of atonement, and from every episode of Black Lightnign aired so far, he's carrying a world of guilt for his participation in the ASA program. Manchester Black is simply a mass murderer, yet you are certainly trying to couch his actions in morally questionable "well he did it, too!" arguments.

And you continue to "step over" my point that your political sympathies influence your outraged response to Black's actions (yes, I did notice the big chunk you omitted from the end of my quoted sentence). I think we're going in circles at this point, and Reverend is doing a better job than I could at analyzing the relative morality of the various characters -- which was never my point anyway, just a means to a rhetorical end.

ETA: I'll try to state my actual point as directly as I can, and invite you to address it if you choose: I think you sympathize with real-world "anti-immigration advocates," I think you feel the show's producers are demonizing them with their portrayal of the Children of Liberty, and I think you believe the showrunners take vicarious pleasure in having Black gun them down -- which is why you assume he won't face punishment. (I brought up Gambi and Proctor only to suggest that your reaction is different when you take satisfaction from the murdered character's death.)

 

[Christopher]

Seems I'm conflating the children of liberty too, because I forgot who Manchester killed.

His victims were the group that James's contact Tom was supposed to go with, so James saved Tom's life by stopping him from going.

That leaves the bar guy (Petrocelli?) the only one of his victims who wasn't on a certain path to get blood on his hands. Or was he?

Petrocelli was leading the group of CoL who attacked the cute alien couple talking about pies at the start of the episode, when Manchester and Supergirl stepped in to stop them. Apparently he was overzealous, because we later saw Lockwood on his phone complaining to someone that Petrocelli could've blown the whole thing by acting prematurely, and thereby alerting the authorities that an anti-alien pogrom was coming.

Both him and Gambi murdered someone after they were no longer an immediate threat to someone's life, but after both of said victims had been a threat to someone's life. Whether it was their own or not, the motives are in the same ballpark, even if Manchester crossed way more lines, allowed the murders to act as his pain release and seemed to have little concern if he got the right people – so he's like Oliver all right.

I wouldn't compare Manchester and Gambi, because their violence is coming from very different places. Gambi is a retired spy; his use of violence and torture is what he's been trained in over decades, a methodical, calculated, strategic practice, and we've only seen him directing it against other people who are in the game with him, other government assets and assassins who would deal with him the same way, so that he presumably feels he has no choice but to kill them before they kill him or his loved ones. Manchester, on the other hand, is a reformed hooligan relapsing into his old habits of impulsive, unregulated violence driven by rage, and he's directing it against everyone associated with Fiona's killers and anyone who gets in the way of his revenge. The one thing they have in common is that they're relapsing into old violent habits they'd hoped to leave behind; otherwise, they're profoundly different.

 

[dahj]

Lena showed up in the Luthor household when she was almost a teenager...

4 is not "almost a teenager".

 

[JanewayRulz!]

Indeed, ordinary people don't that...until they do, which is kind of the point of this arc.
These people aren't trained killers, hardened criminals or psychopaths, they're mostly otherwise ordinary people. Just like the mobs that hacked their neighbours to death in Rwanda, or that participated in Kristallnacht, or the riots surrounding the partition of India & Pakistan, or who put sheets on their heads to go burn crosses in people's lawns and murdered their fellow citizen because of the colour of their skin.

It's all too easy to dismiss such people as raving loonies, but the uncomfortable truth is that under certain conditions, it's terrifyingly easy to nudge people into becoming monsters. Indeed, what's going on with Manchester is on some level a part of that same cycle of hate, violence and retribution.

.

Go to 1:19:29 to see what normal people can do when told they must hurt another human being. (based upon the Milgram experiments of the 1960's) and 1:34:11 to see the scene that crystallized this controversy for me as a teen and why I can't watch ABC's "What would you do?" TV series.

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Ethical Controversies with the Milgram experiments http://www.imarcresearch.com/blog/the-milgram-experiment

 

[Reverend]

Go to 1:19:29 to see what normal people can do when told they must hurt another human being. (based upon the Milgram experiments of the 1960's) and 1:34:11 to see the scene that crystallized this controversy for me as a teen and why I can't watch ABC's "What would you do?" TV series.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

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Ethical Controversies with the Milgram experiments http://www.imarcresearch.com/blog/the-milgram-experiment

I'm well aware of the Milgram experiments, the Stanford prison experiment and the like.
It's really not quite the same thing as we're seeing here. People don't start murdering their neighbours because an authority figure said so or because someone gave them a badge and told them they have power (though it it a little bit like the latter.)
This kind of thing has more to do with group psychology, exploiting fear and hysteria, promoting confirmation bias, paranoia, and of course the age old notion that the average IQ of a crowd is inversely proportional to the number of people in it. A person can be reasoned with, a mob only knows how to snarl.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

And you continue to "step over" my point that your political sympathies influence your outraged response to Black's actions (yes, I did notice the big chunk you omitted from the end of my quoted sentence).

I omitted it because it was not relevant.

There are no "political sympathies" here. Only a straight criticism of any of your continued attempts to draw false equivalencies between Black and Gambi, as I and others have pointed out in this thread.

ETA: I'll try to state my actual point as directly as I can, and invite you to address it if you choose: I think you sympathize with real-world "anti-immigration advocates,"

Unlike too many where this issue is concerned, I've said all along that immigration (to anyone who actually has experience with regions impacted by it) is not a one-way issue, despite what certain unethical politicians and their mouthpieces tell the world. Typical of SG's showrunners, they lean heavily in one direction and only use extremes to describe / target any opposing view or pretend reasoned opposing views do not exist) . So, instead of any sensible, logical debate on the pros and cons of immigration, you get Liberty & Lillian (two extremes), as if anything less than 100% support of immigration (as the showrunners likely see it) means one is like Lillian, Liberty or is the Third Reich reborn, and that is incredibly childish & irresponsible on the showrunner's part, but you always give the terrible handling of the issue a pass, or do not seek responsible dialogue/representation from all sides in-series, hence this debate.

To that end, Manchester Black running around committing mass murder has yet to be responsibly addressed, while reasoned views from the other side of the immigration issue are nowhere to be found by any main character on the show.

(I brought up Gambi and Proctor only to suggest that your reaction is different when you take satisfaction from the murdered character's death.)

Do not assume anything. No one here takes any pleasure in murder. You seem to be willing to defend Black with horribly misapplied comparisons to a character who is trying to stop a terrible program he was a part of, which again, is Gambi taking responsibility for his actions. Manchester Black--in committing mass murder--is as much a terrorist as Liberty's group, so IF anyone is truly a believer in justice, they should hope Manchester Black ends up in prison right next to any of the Liberty gang who committed the same kind of acts.....again, IF....

 

[The Realist]

^ I thought about replying to this, but then realized you were just going to continue not hearing me, and instead debating the Manchester-loving strawman you've installed in my place. So I depart the discussion at this time, TG1, with love and kisses in your general direction. Till next time!

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

^ The only strawman here was provided by you dragging a Black Lightning character (and his SG-inapplicable motives into this), completely avoiding the Manchester issue relevant only to how he's used on Supergirl, while dancing around the showrunners' lack of balance on the immigration matter. Your footwork would have made Nureyev proud!

 

[Jayson1]

Am I the only one thinking he just murdered them last week? We still got more episodes left to explore Manchester Black's murder and the final impact of that on the show. Everything can't be taken care of in 41 minutes or so or however long a episode lasts.

Jason

 

[Guy Gardener]

Mercy and Otis were working for Lex.

The new President is in charge, because of Mercy, Otis, Lockwood and Lex, outing the Alien President.

Lockwood does not know that he helped install a puppet president, who is going to give Lex Luthor a presidential Pardon.

That's what everything here has been about.

Getting a pardon, so that Lex Luthor can resume a normal life.

The rest is just a distraction.

Lex may not even care about Alien Immigration, beyond the affairs of one single particular immigrant.

..

I read some of Bendis' Superman last night. Either Lois was joking, or we are in a continuity again where Luthor is aware of Clark's dual identity and he leaves Clark alone, because of "sportsmanship" or baldy is in love with Lois and doesn't want to hurt her felling by murdering her husband too overtly.

 

[Phoenix219]

Oliver was killing people indiscriminately out of a desire for revenge, just like Manchester; he simply justified it by saying that he was rectifying his family's sins.

Manchester doesn't need to justify what he's doing because he has no real moral qualms over his actions.

Adrian Chase? Is that you?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Lex is going to get his pardon by defeating the sons of liberty, a hate group he founded to foil, just like the Emperor founded the separatists to fight his clone army, to destroy the Jedi in all that crossfire, and win him an Empire.

Lex will have a kill switch to electrify those Bronze masks that all the Sons of Liberty wear, and end this quickly. Maybe he'll say that they got his technology from his mother Lillian, or Lex will fudge how exactly he tazers 200 men in the brain, spread out across the city, but as the hero of the hour, Luthor will get his pardon.

Mathematically everyone that Manchester Black murders before the final show down, would have been killed by Lex Luthor during the final showdown. So Black only took days from those men and not decades... Not that Manchester Knew that, so it doesn't matter, and he's not able to split any hairs, because bloody hands are bloody hands.

 

[The Realist]

So, Manchester Black, arrested and jailed for his crimes. Who woulda thunk?

I nearly lost my shit at the "I'm not struggling; I'm flying" bit. It's a direct adaptation of one of the coolest Superman moments in recent comics, specifically from the "Power and Glory" arc of a couple of years ago in JLA. I loved that moment in the comic, and it was a huge kick to see it used here.

Also loved that rule one of journalism is that when you get kidnapped, you're on the right track -- "Just ask Lois Lane."

And "Earth-90"? Cute.

This continues to be such a great season.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Supergirl
Season 4 / episode 8 - "Bunker Hill"

SG/Kara: "Don't make stop you" Finally--she should have taken him into custody the moment she knew he killed anyone, but..... at least this was a bit of light at the end of the showrunners' tunnel. She was still inexplicably (in-series) leaving a crack in the door to Black having any justifiable (read: redeemable) motives for his actions. As for Black spending any real time in prison...no one should hold their breath about that.

SG ripping the building from its foundations was a cool moment...but it should have killed or at least severely injured everyone inside, as its catwalks (where the Lockwoods and Black were) were secured to the ground, so the earthquake-like movement should have sent them dropping like sacks of cement.

J'onn: Looking for "light" in a mass murderer instead of bringing him to justice? Giving him a free pass, for what?

Agent Liberty / Manchester Black: "Say anything and she dies screaming" Yes, Manchester is such a noble man. "He's a killer.." Mirror.
The dueling personalities was interesting, and it should have dominated more screen time than their physical confrontation. TV Liberty seems like he will seek--or be approached to accept an "upgrade" before this season is over, and there's only one person who would be able to help him...someone who shares some of his views, but would use him more than he realizes. If that turns out to be the case, it will soon suck to be one James Olsen.

Colonel Lauren Haley: Being more concerned with the president's approval numbers read as somewhat self serving, as in keeping him on his current path, if she sees the entire alien immigration affair going in a direction that hurts the president. But that would be advantageous to her if she were seeking higher office..

Frank giving up information was too easy. Hardcore supporters of movements, particularly violent movements are not so easy to crack or betray their interests, hence the reason many (e.g. white nationalists, Islamic terrorists, et al) are all too willing to go to prison or die, rather than reveal anything.

Nia & Brainy: Since he knows of Nia's life/powers in his own century, the default sci-fi position would be for Brainy to not do anything to influence her action/inaction?
His awkward, Maxwell Smart-ian way of trying to be smooth (to Nia) was amusing; despite his age, he's also like a teenager trying hard to impress, but stumbles his way though his attempt.

"Who?" To Kara mentioning Lois Lane. A good nod to the fact everyone does not know who Lane is, no matter how famous she might be in this world.

NOTES: Lockwood's outing of SG had the effect he wanted--with her refusal to reveal her secret identity, he's effectively exposed the superhero conceit that they have any right to run around "hidden", while using otherworldy powers among (or against) the population. This is moving toward the Captain America: Civil War/Accords direction, and that would be explosive if/when Comrade Kara's actions (or an "upgraded Lockwood) convince the world she's a rogue element / more world governments to crack down on / seek to control the superpowered.

GRADE: B.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Strangest thing happened watching my local CW channel through Spectrum app on Roku. Tuned in 20 mintues early and it’s rerun of Murdoch Mysteries. Than at 7pm I suddenly am watching George W Bush interviewed about his father on 60 Mintues!? I did not change channels guide says it’s Supergirl on the CW. That lasted 10 mintues never seen that before. Must have been some weird computer glitch.

 

[The Realist]

Other thoughts:

I can't really feel that Supergirl's loss of her "job" at the DEO is such a big deal. Her formal relationship with them has always been ill-defined, and it isn't like she really needs them to function, so I don't know if that landed with quite the impact that was intended.

Pretty much everything else worked wonderfully, though. There was real tension in Black's scenes with Lockwood and his wife at Lockwood's home, and Black's "I'm the intolerant Left" was a nicely played bit of topicality.

Brainy continues to be a splendid addition, as does Nia. It's nice that they've found a way to to weaponize Nia's powers and give them active, practical application; otherwise, "sleeping and dreaming the future" would be, like, the most passive superpower ever. Plus, it turns out she's an alien, and pretty clearly the Legionnaire Dream Girl's ancestor. (Speaking of Nia, I just finished reading the book about Nicole Maines and her family, Becoming Nicole, and I commend it to anyone interested in a moving, enlightening, and inspiring story.)

I wonder if President Dickweed is going to release Lockwood under public pressure? Or, in light of that scene toward the end, I wonder if Lockwood's wife will take up her incarcerated husband's radical activism? Supergirl does like its female antagonists.

 

[thribs]

Rather sad episode with Black andLiberty being locked up. Hopefully it won’t be for long. Thought Lex would show up by the end as I was sure that was who Lockwood was talking to on the phone.
Speaking of the end, I thought there were only 53 Earths? Where did this Earth-90 come from. I assume that is the 90’s Flash universe. I don’t remember them adding other heroes to that since it was only on one season. I would love if this leads to them continuing that series in comic form etc.